I loved the movie, and when I saw this book, I had to read it. As a pretty faithful retelling of the film, this book hits the same nerves. ( )

I've always found some barrier when it comes to manga, but I wanted to read this on one of my teen's recommendations. It was pretty good! Not too original and the wolf w/ human hair thing was weird, but it was a compelling story nonetheless. ( )

When Hana is in college, she finds herself thinking a lot about a mysterious fellow classmate who eventually reveals to her that he's the last descendant of the Japanese wolves thought to have gone extinct a hundred years ago. He has the ability to transform from a human into a wolf and back again. None of that scares Hana, and the two of them eventually have a couple children, an energetic daughter named Yuki and a quieter and somewhat sickly son named Ame.

Unfortunately, Hana's beloved wolf (whose name is never mentioned) doesn't come home one day, and she discovers that he has died. That leaves her to raise two rowdy wolf children on her own, constantly afraid that someone will discover their secret. It's especially hard in the city, so Hana decides to take a big and risky step and move her little family out into the country, where Ame and Yuki will have the space and freedom to grow up and decide for themselves how they'd like to live their lives.

This is an adaptation of a movie I haven't seen yet, although I believe I have a copy of it somewhere. I'd been debating for ages whether to start with the movie or read the manga first. In the end, I decided that starting with the manga might be best - although I wouldn't be able to judge how good of an adaptation it was, I knew the story was going to be a tearjerker and it'd be easy to take breaks while reading the manga.

Single moms have it rough in general, and Hana, with her two randomly shapeshifting children, had even more problems. She didn't seem to have any sort of support network in the city - her parents had passed away, and I guess she didn't have any close friends either - so there was no one she could go to for help babysitting or figuring out what to do when one of the kids got sick. She couldn't continue with college and couldn't leave the kids alone in order to go to work. I wondered how she was able to financially manage - supposedly the family survived on the "meager savings" the kids' father left them (he'd worked as a mover), which was somehow enough to cover rent and food for a while after the kids' father's death, the purchase of a run-down house in the country (cheap compared to anything in the city, I'm sure, but probably still a lot considering that Hana had zero income), and a move out into the country.

The money aspect bugged me, but I was mostly able to ignore it. It helped that the move to the countryside added something that had previously been missing, a support network for Hana. She still had to be careful, but for the first time she had adults she could talk to and people looking out for her and the kids. (But you'd think someone would wonder about the changes to her family that occurred by the end of the volume. I wonder how she explained that away?)

I imagine this would have been an even more bittersweet read if I were a parent. Hana did the best she could for her kids, considering that she was only human and didn't know everything they were going through. If they wanted to try new experiences and explore different sides of themselves, she tried to give them the space and opportunity to do what they needed to do, but even she had trouble letting go as some of her kids' choices took them places where she couldn't follow and help them.

The artwork was nice enough and fit the style of the movie, but I did have some trouble with Yuki. When she was little, her hair was lighter colored (depicted with screentone in most of the manga and reddish brown in the few color pages). During her older school scenes, however, her hair was a solid black (also black in the few color pages) - if someone hadn't said her name, I wouldn't have realized she was the same character from earlier. I'm not sure why her design was changed like that. I'm also not personally a fan of the way the wolves/werewolves were drawn. (Speaking of which, it kind of weirded me out that Hana's first time having sex with her wolf guy was when he was in his in-between form.)

All in all, this was very good, and now I know which parts of the movie will probably require tissues. I do wish that the ending hadn't focused so much on the kids, though - we got to see them moving on to their new lives, while Hana was left alone in a huge and empty house, with only her one picture of her beloved wolf for company. A panel or two showing her having a companionable meal with the elderly couple who'd helped her out would have been nice, for example. I wanted to know that Hana's life was continuing too - parents can't just be parents, or what's left for them after their kids have moved on?

Extras:

This was originally released as three separate volumes in Japan, and this Yen Press edition included several full-color pages at what would have been the beginnings of each of the three volumes, as well as drawings and notes from Yu and Mamoru Hosoda at what would have been the ends of the volumes. The end of the first volume includes character sketches and brief character personality information.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )

おおかみこどもの雨と雪 or Wolf Children Ame and Yuki is a manga about two children, the mother a human, and the father a man who is half wolf. The children inherit the ability to switch between human and wolf. The father died, although how he died was not stated. The children aren’t very good at choosing weather to be a wolf or a human at a young age and this causes problems for the single mother. They end up moving, the daughter, Yuki takes on a human life and goes to school while the son, Ame takes on a wolf life and he helps with the forest and is taught the basics of life by a fox. The story is told by the perspective of Yuki. I enjoyed the manga, it had a heartwarming, wholesome, and kinda relatable story. ( )

Fantastic story! A mother is left to raise her two children against the odds when their father dies suddenly in a tragic accident. What no one knows, is that their father was half human, half wolf, and the children have inherited some of his traits, which they must keep hidden for their own safety. To hide their secret, the family moves to the country, attempting to live off the land. With some help from the neighbors that they originally avoided out of fear, they start to feel like they can make it. The story follows the wolf children through through their adolescence. ( )